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“Knower” As an Ethical Concept: from Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition

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“Knower” As an Ethical Concept: from Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition Feminist Philosophy Quarterly Volume 4 | Issue 4 Article 2 2018 “Knower” as an Ethical Concept: From Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition Matthew Congdon Vanderbilt University [email protected] Recommended Citation Congdon, Matthew. 2018. “‘Knower’ as an Ethical Concept: From Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 4 (4). Article 2. Congdon – “Knower” as an Ethical Concept: From Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition “Knower” as an Ethical Concept: From Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition1 Matthew Congdon Abstract Recent discussions in critical social epistemology have raised the idea that the concept “knower” is not only an epistemological concept but an ethical concept as well. Though this idea plays a central role in these discussions, the theoretical underpinnings of the claim have not received extended scrutiny. This paper explores the idea that “knower” is an irreducibly ethical concept in an effort to defend its use as a critical concept. In section 1, I begin with the claim that “knower” is an irreducibly normative and social concept, drawing from some ideas in Wilfrid Sellars. In section 2, I argue that one’s being a knower involves demands for various sorts of ethically laden recognition. I develop this thought by arguing that Axel Honneth’s threefold typology of recognition—love, respect, and esteem—finds clear expression within the context of socio-epistemic practice. I conclude in section 3 by arguing that Miranda Fricker’s proposed “analogy” between epistemic and moral perception should be modified to indicate a closer relationship than mere analogy. Keywords: ethics, social epistemology, feminist epistemology, recognition, epistemic injustice What is a “knower”? There is a strand of ancient thought for which this is an essentially ethical question. The famous opening lines of Aristotle’s Metaphysics attribute to us a naturally arising “desire to know” (980a21–27), and Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics includes a discussion of intellectual virtues as a proper part of the study of ethics. If becoming a knower is ultimately a matter of shaping a certain kind of desire, and if virtue is understood as the shaping of desires in ways that constitute flourishing, then the process of becoming a knower is inseparable from the broader project of pursuing a flourishing human life. Part of what this suggests is 1 I am grateful to Paul Giladi, Karen Ng, and Francey Russell for reading earlier drafts and providing helpful suggestions for improvement. A version of this paper was presented at the 11th International Critical Theory Conference of Rome, and I thank the participants for a lively discussion on that occasion. Published by Scholarship@Western, 2018 1 Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2018, Vol. 4, Iss. 4, Article 2 that the very idea of one’s becoming a knower is adequately grasped only against the background of a broader ethical conception of what a flourishing human life involves. More succinctly, it suggests that “knower” is an irreducibly ethical concept. Though this idea has ancient precedent, it has been raised in a fresh way by recent work in the ethics and politics of epistemology, exemplified by Miranda Fricker’s much-discussed work, Epistemic Injustice (2007).2 There, the idea is developed negatively: the aim is to carve out conceptual space for a distinctive sort of injustice characterized by the fact that its victims are “wronged in their capacities as knowers” (44). This implies that one’s acquisition of epistemic capacities involves, in addition to gaining conceptual powers that allow one to relate thoughtfully to the world, a newly acquired form of vulnerability to wrongdoing. This negative thesis, in turn, implies something positive: namely, that being a knower is essentially to bear a normative status that is simultaneously epistemic and ethical: it is epistemic insofar as the label “knower” indicates the roles one may legitimately assume within practices of justification and warrant, and ethical, in the sense that being a knower implicates one within interpersonal relations of answerability that invoke notions of justice and injustice, flourishing and degradation, virtue, and vice, rightful treatment and moral injury. If we take this idea seriously, then simply in describing someone as a bearer of epistemic agency, one thereby ascribes to that person an ethical normative standing. My aim in this paper is to lend support to the thesis that “knower” is an irreducibly ethical concept by defending a particular account of what is involved in the second-personal act of recognizing another as a knower. Specifically, I develop a picture of the essentially recognitive structure of the concept “knower” via three broad moves. First, I draw from Wilfrid Sellars’s claim that epistemological concepts—concepts like knowledge and evidence—must be understood in irreducibly social and normative terms. Second, I connect this social-normative conception of epistemological concepts with some central themes in Axel Honneth’s neo-Hegelian theory of recognition. Epistemological themes arise throughout work in neo-Hegelian recognition theory,3 and several authors have already noted connections between the philosophy of recognition and work on epistemic injustice (McConkey 2004; Pohlhaus 2014, 105–106; Congdon 2017; Giladi 2018; Bratu and Lepold 2018). I add to these efforts by arguing that the essentially recognitive 2 The contemporary literature on the ethics and politics of epistemology is immense and growing. See, esp., Fricker 2007; the essays collected in Sullivan and Tuana 2007; Mills 1997; Medina 2013; and the essays collected in Kidd, Medina, and Pohlhaus 2017. 3 Honneth gives special attention to the “epistemology” of recognition in Honneth 2001 and 2008. For a helpful analysis, see Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2007. Published by Scholarship@Western, 2018 2 Congdon – “Knower” as an Ethical Concept: From Epistemic Agency to Mutual Recognition structure of the concept of a “knower” offers a compelling framework within which to situate the claim that “knower” is an essentially ethical concept. I develop this thought by arguing that Honneth’s threefold typology of recognition—love, respect, and esteem—finds clear expression within the context of socio-epistemic practice. Third, I ask what sort of perception is involved in recognizing others as knowers in this ethically robust sense, arguing that the recognition-theoretical model should be supplemented with a neo-Aristotelian conception of moral perception, along the lines defended by John McDowell and Iris Murdoch. In this connection, I consider an analogy that Fricker proposes between epistemic and moral perception (2007, chap. 3), and argue that, in order to make good on the claim that “knower” is an ethical concept, this must go beyond mere analogy. On the view I prefer, to perceive another as a knower is already a matter of ethical perception. This brings us back to a variation of the Aristotelian claim with which I began, namely, that the very idea of being or becoming a knower is only graspable against the background of an ethical conception of a flourishing human life. 1. “Knower” as a Normative Concept In order to build up to the idea that “knower” is an ethical concept, I will start by sketching a version of the more basic claim that “knower” is a normative concept. To that end, it will be helpful to follow an approach suggested by Wilfrid Sellars in his famous essay, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1997). A central line of thinking in Sellars’s essay runs as follows. In characterizing someone or something in epistemic terms, as when we characterize someone as a knower or something as evidence, we are not just making a claim about what that person or thing is in a merely descriptive sense but ascribing a normative status to that person or thing, saying what roles that person or thing may legitimately assume within practices of giving and asking for reasons.4 Consider, for example, the contrast between the following two judgments (Kukla 2000, 209–210): 4 Sellars (1997) sometimes puts this in terms of a logical distinction between judgments of matters of natural fact and judgments of matters of epistemic fact (§17). Or, in other places, by contrasting epistemic characterizations with empirical descriptions (§36). Both points of contrast can, however, be misleading, at least insofar as they suggest a strong split between the normative and the natural or empirically available world. I agree with McDowell that Sellars’s insight into the normative status of epistemic concepts can be appreciated without taking on the further commitment that “placing something in the logical space of reasons is, as such, to be contrasted with giving an empirical description of it” (McDowell 1996, 5n4). This technical point is important in light of the form of ethical perception I defend in section 3, below. Published by Scholarship@Western, 2018 3 Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2018, Vol. 4, Iss. 4, Article 2 (a) “x is green.” (b) “x is evidence.” Both judgments have normative dimensions, but in importantly different ways. Judgment (a) is normative in the sense of being subject to normative assessment in its meaning and use: it can be interpreted, evaluated as correct or incorrect, and can justify other claims via logical relations of material implication and exclusion. It bears normative relations with other possible judgments, for example, “x is the same color as Kermit” (material implication) and “x is colorless” (exclusion). It may also bear rational relations to practical commitments in the domain of action, for example, if x is a traffic light just ahead. The judgment is, in this fashion, embedded within a normative space that defines a set of rational relationships it has to other possible judgments and actions. But judgment (b), by contrast, is normative in deeper sense. For in addition to being susceptible to all the first-order forms of normative assessment just mentioned, it also serves the higher-order task of purporting to describe the conditions of normative assessment themselves.
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